I follow international Association Football (read: Soccer), but that's about it. I actually despise professional hockey, but don't let the news out: I'm Canadian, and I may just be lynched for saying it.

Even if that were true (which it's not - my future father-in-law is a firm believer in the realism of WWE wrestling), I don't see how it's at all relevant.

While you're certainly not wrong, I don't see how that's relevant either. If I want to fix a game, I must have incentive to do so. Great sums of money is most likely (but granted, not necessarily definitely) that incentive. So sharing a fraction of that money with the people who helped me make it isn't really a huge deal. It's only fair - they did all the work. All I did was ask them to do it, and I made millions of dollars out of it. I'm willing to share some of it if it means avoiding losing all of it to an investigation that could land me in serious financial and legal trouble.

I could say the same thing about any sport. I know I don't care to see the same ten/eleven/twelve/thirteen/etc. men play the same number of the same opponents they fought last year, especially if I've already seen them do it for a number of consecutive years already. That's part of the reason I only really follow international soccer, which really only becomes important enough for me to care every four years. A lot changes on a team in four years, so it's rarely (though admittedly not never) the same teams facing off.

On television, just about anything.

I don't want to keep repeating myself, but as you seem to have glanced over it previously I'll give it one more go...

You're on a football team. Whichever one you want, it doesn't really matter. You're a good player, maybe even the best. Let's say you're the star quarterback of the league, and every team desperately wanted you. You're a household name throughout the country and you make over $30 million a game (I don't know what the average football player makes these days, beyond "way more than I do", but let's just pretend for the sake of argument that this is a high rate of pay for the NFL).

Your coach approaches you and a few of the other players one night. He's been asked by someone (let's say the owner of the next game's opposing team) to help the opposing team land a big endorsement deal; to do so, you and your team mates will have to throw the game. The coach and owner have agreed, and all the backroom politics have been dealt with. The game is now fixed, whether you like it or not. Losing this game, which you and your team are expected to take unchallenged, could seriously damage your career for years to come. Your career and your name are at stake. Are you really going to agree to not only go along with it, but to keep it secret, if you're not making HUGE money in the process? Of course not.

Teams that are asked or forced to throw a game still make big money, regardless of what you seem to think. Sports rigging wouldn't exist otherwise, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

This depends on what degree of rigging we're talking about. If we're talking about the odd game or series of games being fixed because of a deal reached in the boardrooms, then I have to say you're dead wrong; big money is handed over in such cases, more than enough to make up for a years' worth of lost endorsements.

If we're talking about entire seasons being rigged with even the final game being decided months or years in advance, then one would have to believe that the league is fixed to the point where teams are allowed to win or lose at a rate that guarantees more or less even, or at the very least believable, endorsements all around. I point you again towards wrestling: are not even the lowest-ranked wrestlers endorsed by big money corporations? Granted, they may not make as much money as the more "successful" wrestlers, but it may really be just as simple as them not caring, so long as they're more famous than the rest of us.

If the players only care about making money and not the game itself, then there is literally nothing stopping them from agreeing to throw a game if it means they'll still make money out of it. Which I've already pointed out they will.

That depends entirely on the player, plain and simple. A team paid to lose can still pay the players just as easily as a team allowed to win.

There are plenty of people out there with enough money to fix a football game. Pretty much any owner of any football team, for example. The logic is simple: they can make money out of it, just like how the people behind the inception and rigging of pro wrestling make money out of it.

As you said, there are plenty of sports out there to rig. And I'd bet any amount of money that all of them have been rigged, to varying degrees, at some point in their history. Thinking that football is unique in that it has never or could never be fixed really is terribly, painfully naive.

And I think you simply enjoy watching football too much to want to believe it could ever be fixed.

First off I'm more of a soccer and basketball guy myself. I do watch football though, but not that often. Plus your taking to much knowledge from games that are rigged and trying to say its the same principle as in football. Plus you obvious don't watch football (and before you say something about it i meant American football) so your trying to talk about something that you know little about.

I don't know much about wrestling sooo you probably have more knowledge than me taking into consideration that your dad watches it. So my facts my be off. Well, what is their like 10-15 people in wrestling? Well its obvious that it will be easier for them to be endorse than over 1,696 individual football players (that was back in 2005 so it maybe more or less now not sure.) Thats why if your a "good" football player you want to be on a winning team so you have a higher chance of getting one.

Now, why would one of the better football player want to hurt his chances of getting a bonus and endorsements by hurting his teams score or hurting his own stats. You could easily tell if a team was throwning a game. And a team doesn't get an endorsement for winning one game (unless it is the Super Bowl in case you don't know what that is it is the World Cup of football) Which means they would have to bribe more than one team so that they could get a endorsement in line. Plus don't you think the team that was asked to throw the game so they could get the endorsements would think if they won the game they could get the endorsement.

The fact all the players from both teams would want a cut of the endorsement money which is logical like you said if you did the work you want the cash. So of course you like you said you would pay them. After paying 106 players (average amount of players per team is 53) and the coaches and the owners how much money do you think would be left?
It wouldn't be a sum of money anymore. (probably still more than what most people make)

So don't you think and owner of a team might just say if you guys win this game ill give you all a big bonus. And you guys get an endorsement contract which gives you are more money. Do you think a team will lose with that incentive? I think not.

And if he did this he would only have to pay his team and not two teams which means more money for the owner of the team and thats what he wants.